Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Chicago Trip Day 1

I'm absolutely spent! Putting aside the fact that I nearly overslept two hours, I still made my flight to Chicago, and was still tired. Kudos to Dad for the wake up call. I've never packed so fast as I did this morning between 5:00 and 5:30 AM. All in all, besides the time, I had a great flight to the Windy City, by the way the wind today was averaging nine miles an hour, Windy City indeed. I found that flying into O'Hare is a lot like flying in to Will Rogers, the approach and landing starts 300 miles out.

A contact at the office I'm working with picked me up at the airport and off we headed downtown. The office I'm working for is literally a block off the Magnificent Mile as is my hotel. I pretty much spent the day installing software and getting everything ready for training the next three days. I was a little afraid that I would be working for one of those offices that opens early and closes late. Nope, my hours, at the most, will be 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM with an hour for lunch. Sweetness. This will allow me plenty of time to get into trouble around Gotham.

Tonight after checking into my hotel room I headed to the Magnificent Mile. I've been to Chicago before but I had never been to this area on Michigan Avenue. Meh. I'm sure it would be great place to spend the day, if you like shopping at Tiffany and Co., Saks 5th Avenue, and Ralph Lauren, to name a few. Lots of shopping going on and not much else. I had a great time just walking up and down the Mile admiring the views and architecture. I even walked down to the John Hancock building and bought a pass to the observation deck on the 94th floor (16.00 bucks). The elevator to the observation deck took 40 seconds to make the distance to the 94th floor, supposedly going 20 miles an hour as the fastest elevator in North America. My ears popped a lot.

In total, not a bad day. I saw some great sites, had some 5.00 dollar domestic beers (really Chicago?), and got to encounter more people in a small radius than I ever have with the exception of all the blue hairs in downtown Las Vegas.

Here's some pictures from the John Hancock building observatory as well as some shots of the various buildings along Michigan Avenue:

I'll try to do a post again tomorrow; however, I'm planning on going out to Boystown so it may be a late night!